Single B cell isolation methodologies have emerged as an important technology in the quest to identify high quality functional monoclonal antibodies to a range of therapeutic targets, including those that are considered extremely challenging. Here we describe the use of a number of cutting-edge antibody discovery technologies to efficiently interrogate the B cell repertoire of immunised animals and humans to identify rare antibodies with desirable characteristics. We employ a high-throughput automated B cell culture screening platform to mine out the memory B cell repertoire and a novel fluorescence-based proximity secretion assay (“fluorescent foci” system) to sample the plasma cell repertoire directly in niches such as the bone marrow. More recently we have been developing a droplet microfluidic platform to enhance our ability to sample both the memory and plasma cell pool. We will describe these technologies and how we have applied them to several therapeutically relevant targets.

Daniel John Lightwood

Director, Antibody DiscoveryUCB Pharma

After studying for a PhD from the University of Cambridge, Biochemistry Department in the area of protein engineering, Dr Daniel Lightwood joined Celltech (acquired by UCB in 2004) in 1999. During his 16 years at UCB Celltech, Dr. Lightwood has played a key role in developing UCB’s Core antibody discovery platform and has been responsible for successfully applying the technology across a number of UCB therapeutic antibody programs. Dr. Lightwood currently holds the position of Director, Antibody Discovery at UCB Celltech managing the Core Antibody Discovery team.